On John Dean and the Repeating of History

On the table beside Dean, there was a fat copy of The Washington Post’s edition of the Mueller Report, which Dean brought himself. He wore glasses, oval slivers that were different than the thick-rimmed spectacles he wore on July 11, 1974—the last time that he sat before the committee.

John Dean was the key witness in the Watergate hearings, almost half a century ago, after working to cover-up the most famous political scandal in American history. House Judiciary Democrats brought Dean in as an expert witness, but it’s difficult to translate a sympathetic character out of Dean’s Watergate persona. The former White House Counsel flipped on Nixon because he suspected that the president planned to pin the blame on him. He was sentenced to four months, and the sentence was adjusted to time served.

He’s responsible for perhaps the most famous quote from the Nixon tapes: We have a cancer within, close to the presidency, that is growing.

Over the course of a few hours, as Dean took questions from hostile Republicans, he sent off the confident air of a seasoned pitcher grinning at some trembling rookie beside the plate. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) became the jester of the court as he tried to push the Nixon aide into some sort of corner or even move him. Dean’s responses repeatedly sparked laughter at Gaetz’s expense.

But the television cameras were focused elsewhere, and the hearing was understood largely to be a failed attempt at whatever plot line the Democrats were hoping to unfold. The Daily Beast called it “a dicey choice from the get-go,” while The New Republic panned “it was a dud.”

After the hearing, I spoke with Republican lawmaker Jim Jordan of Ohio, a fiery Trump loyalist who, when asked about the botched spectacle, shrugged and told me, “it’s just more of the same.” Asked what Republicans should do if the Democrats continue to play out the same sort of hearings, he said “we just keep focused on the facts and the truth, that’s all you can do.”

But if the Dean hearing was a “dud,” the Democrats were successful on Tuesday when the House voted to authorize court action for their subpoenas. It was the largest moment in their attempt to break through the blockade of the Trump administration and will allow them to go to court to enforce their subpoenas, which Trump has treated as irrelevant. The vote fell upon party lines, with no Republicans voting against the president.

Moments after that vote, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a young, black New York Democrat with a seat on the Judiciary Committee, told Playboy, “the stonewalling from the Trump administration has begun to falter as they’ve realized that House Democrats are going to maintain our resolve … this is the beginning of the capitulation and if they continue to stonewall, including figures who have left the administration like Don McGahn and Hope Hicks, you will see the House intensify our efforts even more.”

But things get ugly when you try to read the political palms—there’s a chance that the ruling could set up a Supreme Court fight pitting the Administration against Congress. A battle of the supposed co-equal branches of government. Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Cornell and author of “Congress's Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers,” told Playboy “if the district judge orders [former White House counsel] Don McGahn to testify, he'll almost certainly appeal to the court of appeals. If he loses there, he might ask the Supreme Court to take the case, but—like almost every other sort of case—it's up to the Supreme Court whether it hears it or not.”

When asked about the possibility of a Supreme Court showdown, Democrats seemed confident that the legislative branch will prevail. Jeffries told Playboy “it’s possible that this could go to the Supreme Court and we’re confident that legal precedent is on our side and that reasonable Justices, who believe in the institution of the Supreme Court—like Chief Justice John Roberts—will follow the law and set aside partisan politics.”

Congressman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) told me “I’m not very concerned, I do think the precedent of enforcing a lawfully issued subpoena by Congress is clear and unequivocal. I guess anyone can appeal anything to the Supreme Court, it seems to me that this issue ought to be resolved before then.” While Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Mar.) said that “the Trump administration has this theory that Congress needs to prove—as if it were some kind of administrative tribunal—exactly its need for evidence. The courts have been extremely deferential to a broad investigatory power by Congress.”

Though he warned about it during Monday’s Congressional testimony, John Dean may live to see history repeat itself. One lawyer that I spoke with pointed to United States v. Nixon, a case in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Richard Nixon had to turn over the Nixon tapes. Democrats in 2019 can only hope they’re as successful as the lawmakers who sat on Capitol Hill the last time Dean testified before the House Judiciary Committee.